for mom

This last post is dedicated to my mom, who is the bravest person I know.

On Friday, she started chemotherapy for a mass on her spleen; she’d been in remission for eight years. You’d think she’d be pissed off at the world, the universe, all the Gods, the next-door neighbour, the postman, everything and everyone. You’d think she’d be depressed and feeling sorry for herself (I know I would). But she wasn’t angry and she wasn’t sad. Instead, she went in there like a boss, prepared with a bag of yarn for crocheting and a Sudoku book, some lunch and little snacks as if she were going on a trip abroad and needed something to occupy her time on the plane.

And even though she had several bad reactions to the serum and her first treatment lasted 9 hours, even though the yarn and Sudoku book never made it out of the bag, even though her lunch went untouched and she was in complete agony all night, my sisters and I received this little ray of sunshine in our inboxes on Sunday morning:

“This morning I got dressed nice and warm and fed my little birds. They were pretty happy. And then I went for a marvelous walk out back and up the hill. Not the  hill to the house but the one to the right which leads to the fields. Oh it was so wonderful to be out in the fresh dry air. I wandered around the field noting all the new growth from whenever it was I last walked up there and it always gives me such hope to see that life really does find a way.'”

When I became a mother, I realised just how many sacrifices my own mom had to make over the years for my sisters and I. There isn’t a mother’s day card on the planet that fully encompasses the selflessness, the unconditional love, the lengths mothers will go to keep their children safe and happy, even if that means blowing sunshine out of their arses while having chemotherapy, just so that their kids don’t have to worry.

Thank you, mom, for inspiring me to be a better mother (and person) every day. I only hope I can be as strong a role model for Wren someday. 

Also, here’s to kicking that cancer’s ass!

***

Well, that’s it folks. I survived 30 days (minus 2? 3? posts) of blogging.

And now, it’s time to switch gears, slow down, catch up on some sleep, decorate the Christmas tree, bake a pumpkin pie, light a fire, read my brother-in-law’s manuscript, turn the damned computer off. I might be back in December, I might not. But one thing is for certain, I won’t wait for another Nablopomo to roll around before putting pen to paper again. No matter how challenging it was, it still felt great to write again and reconnect with long-lost friends.

So grateful to Xanthe, Andrea, Karen, Pen and Elizabeth for lighting a fire under my ass this past month. I couldn’t have done it without them. And thanks to each and every one of you for stopping by and commenting. Really means the world to me.